麻辣烫 (Malatang or Sichuan Hotpot)

Dinner @ Aladdin Malatang, a shop at the basement of my apartment.

 

This is not true Yangtze River food. It's origin is in Sichuan. But the Shanghainese had embraced Sichuan food with a fiery passion in recent years that it actually felt like a local dish now.

 

This is very economical local chow. There are hundreds of them in the city. Basically, the shops have trays and trays of different ingredients where one can pick and mix and then be charged accordingly. These ingredients are thrown into a boiling pot of stock to be cooked and then served in the same piping hot stock with chilli paste, Sichuan pepper powder, sesame sauce and Chinese black vinegar.

 

All one needs to do is simply to mix everything up and consume at will.

 

For Singaporeans - this is almost similar to "Yong Tau Foo".

 

In my case, I had chosen for my dinner: enoki mushrooms, black seaweed, quail eggs, fried dough sticks, lettuce, tofu skin, fish balls with pork fillings, egg dumplings, rice cakes, Chinese Wombok, fresh bamboo and black woodear fungus....and everything for just 20.50RMB.

 

(This photo was taken with a mobile phone and hence the quality suffers. Mobile phones are not cameras)

 

Done